Helsinki Commission Chairman Benjamin Cardin opened the hearing by speaking to these three dimensions. Regarding human rights, there are several concerns. Azerbaijan's presidential elections fell short of international standards and there are several individuals who have been harassed and detained because of their desire to report on events in Azerbaijan, raising concerns about freedom of the media.

Chairman Cardin was joined by Eric Rubin, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of State, Thomas O. Melia, Miriam Lanskoy, and Brenda Shaffer.

Religious Freedom in the National Security Strategy of the United States

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

The National Security Strategy of the United States is the most important comprehensive national security report an Administration releases. During the drafting process there is robust competition inside and outside government over wording. None of the first eight editions of the National Security Strategy, issued from 1987 to 1996, mentioned religious freedom. Legislation and law, grassroots advocacy, and external events like the civil war in Sudan contributed to President William Clinton including the first reference in 1997. From 1997 to 2017, eight of the nine editions, spanning two Democratic and two Republican Administration, have included religious freedom (2010 was the exception).
Download the full report to learn more.

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A Call for Action against Anti-Semitism in Europe

Friday, February 02, 2018

By Erika Schlager, Counsel for International Law,
and Mischa Thompson, Senior Policy Advisor
In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the OSCE Italian Chairmanship hosted an “International Conference on the Responsibility of States, Institutions, and Individuals in the Fight against Anti-Semitism in the OSCE Area” on January 29, 2018. More than 300 government officials and civil society leaders participated in the event, including ten cabinet-level Ministers from OSCE participating States. Ambassador Michael Kozak of the Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, represented the United States.
Reflecting the Chairmanship’s strong commitment to addressing anti-Semitism, the conference was held during the 80th anniversary of Italy’s adoption of the Italian Racial Laws, which restricted the rights of Italian Jews and the native inhabitants of the colonies.
Conference participants raised concerns about the increasing power of anti-Semitic and xenophobic parties in France, Austria, Hungary, and Germany; anti-Semitic marches in Poland, Sweden, and the United States; and the safety and future of Jewish communities in Europe.
Several speakers voiced alarm regarding the a law passed in the Polish parliament on the eve of the conference, which is ostensibly intended to ensure accuracy when ascribing responsibility for the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany, particularly at death camps in German-occupied Poland. Critics argue that the bill will criminalize scholarship, journalism, and even first-hand observations regarding wartime crimes committed by Poles.
“Holocaust denial,” observed one participant, “should not be a state policy.”
Ministers from a number of countries cited the importance of speaking out against anti-Semitism. They also stressed the value of using the expertise of the OSCE Chair-in-Office Personal Representatives and OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights’ tools on hate crimes, Jewish community security, tolerance and Holocaust education, and civil society capacity and coalition building. Several government representatives commented on their respective countries’ use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism as a useful guide for participating States and civil society to expand efforts to address rising intolerance.
Non-governmental participants emphasized the important role of policymakers and government officials in speaking out against hate crimes and drafting and implementing laws to ensure that Jewish communities can live and worship in safety. Ensuring that individuals can practice the central tenets of their faith, from circumcision to kosher food preparation, without government impediments is central to freedom of worship.
Civil society groups, as well as representatives from Facebook and Google, discussed initiatives to address hate online, including the role of internet service providers in removing content that may violate terms of service or violate the law.
Of particular concern were disinformation campaigns on social media that promulgate negative stereotypes about Jews and may foster prejudice. One speaker described the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as an early exemplar of “fake news,” and others stressed the importance of counter-narratives to address particularly problematic stereotypes and falsehoods. While artificial intelligence may have a future role in addressing content that may be legal but is still harmful, current technology does not provide solutions.
A discussion of efforts targeting youth through education and sports featured Israeli Olympian Shaul Landansky and focused on the creation of environments in which anti-prejudice and anti-discrimination tools could be utilized, and at the same time bring diverse communities together. Such initiatives have the potential to broaden coalitions to address anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred.
OSCE Chair and Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano called for the OSCE to convene an annual anti-Semitism conference to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and ensure a sustained focus on addressing anti-Semitism in the OSCE region. Slovakia, as the OSCE Chair-in-Office for 2019, has agreed to hold an anti-Semitism conference next January.
Prior to the opening of the Chairmanship conference, Pope Francis granted an audience to delegates and speakers, citing the importance of “educat[ing] young generations to become actively involved in the struggle against hatred and discrimination.”
His point was reiterated later in the day at the conference by young leader Alina Bricman of the European Union of Jewish students, who cited “treasuring inclusive societies” and “empowering youth to shape their communities” as key to a shared future.
Members of the Helsinki Commission have long advanced solutions to address anti-Semitism. Ranking Commissioner Senator Ben Cardin serves as the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s first Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance.
"The growth in anti-Semitic and xenophobic political parties across Europe and North America that foster an environment of hate increase the urgency of this conference,” said Senator Cardin. “Acknowledging our common history of the Holocaust is essential but more must be done. It’s incumbent upon all civilized people to ensure that tools are in place to counter a resurgence of the fear and hate mongering — whether directed at old targets or new—that led to those tragic events in the first place."
“I am deeply disappointed that on the eve of this conference the Polish parliament passed a law that may impede research, scholarship, journalism—even personal reflections—on the Holocaust subject to criminal penalties. While the stated purpose of this law is to improve more accurate statements about the Holocaust, this is the wrong way to achieve that goal,” he said.

On December 8, 2017, the OSCE Ministerial Council approved two new cross-dimensional decisions to combat human trafficking. One decision was led by the United States, Italy, and Belarus and focused on preventing child trafficking and other forms of sexual exploitation of children, particularly on the internet and in sex tourism. The Ministerial Council also passed a second decision, introduced by the 2017 Austrian Chairmanship of the OSCE, titled, “Strengthening Efforts to Prevent Trafficking in Human Beings.”
The decision addresses all forms of human trafficking and reflects key initiatives of the OSCE in recent years, especially those that encourage corporate responsibility for prevention of trafficking in supply chains.
Examining Subcontractors
Beginning with the responsibility of governments to ensure that goods and services for the government are purchased from trafficking-free sources, the decision commends “participating States that require contractors supplying goods and services to the government to take effective and appropriate steps to address the risks of human trafficking in their supply chains.”
Notably, the decision goes beyond the primary contracting entity and encourages governments to examine any intended subcontractors and employees., It reflects the reality that while a prime contractor may be trafficking-free, in an effort to cut costs and increase profit margins, work may be subcontracted out to less scrupulous vendors who may not be as aware of, or as concerned with, government requirements.
Addressing Vulnerability Factors
The decision also addresses the precursors to human trafficking, commending participating States that prohibit contractors, subcontractors, and employees from “participating in activities known to lead to human trafficking.”
Many contract and subcontract provisions that may seem neutral on first glance in reality lead in whole or in part to situations of vulnerability to human trafficking. For instance, in 2015, the United States banned the following practices in U.S. government contracts as relates to actions by the contractors, subcontractors, or employees as the actions were closely linked to human trafficking:
Purchasing commercial sex.
Destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating, or otherwise denying an employee access to that employee’s identity or immigration documents without the employee’s consent.
Failing to abide by any contractual provision to pay return transportation costs upon the end of employment for the purpose of pressuring an employee into continued employment.
Soliciting a person for the purpose of employment, or offering employment, by means of materially false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises regarding that employment.
Charging recruited employees unreasonable placement or recruitment fees, or any such fee that violates the laws of the country from which an employee is recruited.
Providing or arrange housing that fails to meet host country housing and safety standards.
Using Government Contracts as Incentives
Using government contracts as an incentive for businesses to undergo the auditing and policy overhauls required for clean supply chains, the decision ultimately calls on participating States to “take into account whether businesses are taking appropriate and effective steps to address the risks of human trafficking, including with regards to their subcontractors and employees, when considering the awarding of government contracts for goods and services.”
Historically, many governments have sought the least expensive contract for the most goods or services on the principle of using taxpayer funds efficiently—creating a perverse incentive for companies to turn a blind eye to human trafficking and its precursors. The decision championed by the 2017 Austrian Chairmanship encourages participating States to reverse the incentive and reward with government contracts only to those companies that have done their due diligence to ensure trafficking-free supply chains.
This requirement reaches past the comparatively small number of businesses that receive government contracts and encourages all businesses competing for government contracts to clean their supply chains first. Strong implementation by OSCE participating States could set new industry standards where human trafficking and its precursors become significantly less profitable.

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Turkey: The World’s Largest Jailer of Journalists

Friday, December 22, 2017

By Jordan Warlick, Policy Advisor
and John Engelken, Intern
The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide reached a record high in 2017, with 262 journalists behind bars. For the second consecutive year, the worst offender was Turkey, with 73 journalists imprisoned for their work.[1] These statistics come from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which released its annual “prison census” on December 13, 2017, based on numbers as of December 1, 2017.
Media freedom in Turkey has long been restricted, but press freedoms in the country have declined precipitously since July 2016, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan imposed a state of emergency following the failed coup attempt against his government. The state of emergency gives the government sweeping authority to apprehend perceived enemies of the state and close and seize the assets of any institution deemed a national security threat.
Using these powers, President Erdoğan has intensified his attacks against forces he deems threatening—journalists among them—to silence critics and monopolize the country’s political narrative. Though confronted with legitimate security concerns and challenges to his rule, Erdoğan has manipulated this political climate to his advantage.
Under the pretext of national security, the Turkish government systematically targets journalists and independent voices by with terrorism-related charges, often drawing circumstantial connections between these individuals and terrorist organizations or the Gülen network – an organization the government claims was responsible for the 2016 coup attempt.
At a November 2017 Helsinki Commission hearing, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Jonathan Cohen testified that the state of emergency “appears to have been used expansively to target many Turks with no connection to the coup attempt.”
At the same hearing, Nate Schenkkan, Director of Freedom House’s Nations in Transit Project, testified to how the crackdown has targeted independent media. Since the state of emergency came into effect, Schenkkan said, “162 media outlets have been closed, including six news agencies, 48 newspapers, 20 magazines, 31 radio stations, 28 TV stations, and 29 publishing houses.”
A recent spate of trials against journalists illustrates the poor media climate that plagues the country. According to a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) report, during the week of December 4 to December 11, 2017, a total of 68 journalists were due to appear in court in four different trials, a third of whom were already detained. Cumhürrıyet, Turkey’s oldest newspaper, has come under particular attack with journalists like Ahmet Şık, Emre İper, Murat Sabuncu, and Oğuz Güven detained or sentenced under baseless terrorism charges. RSF Turkey representative Erol Önderoğlu has been charged with “terrorist propaganda” along with two co-defendants, and his next court date is set for December 26.
Though Turkey is a NATO ally and critical partner for the U.S. in numerous security and economic fields, its government’s ongoing attacks against free media are of grave concern, and the Helsinki Commission recently has sought to bring further attention to the worrying state of affairs in Turkey.
In October 2017, 10 members of the Commission, including the Commission’s four senior leaders, sent a letter to President Erdogan calling on him to lift the state of emergency in the country. The Commission’s November 2017 hearing highlighted victims of the sweeping arrests since the coup, and in a staff-level briefing on internet freedom that same month, McCain Institute expert Berivan Orucoglu described the sharp decline of freedom on the net in Turkey.
In their October letter to the Turkish President, the Commissioners warned that “[t]he prolonged state of emergency is gravely undermining Turkey’s democratic institutions and the durability of our countries’ longstanding strategic partnership.”
As a participating State of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Turkey commits to preserving the rule of law, democratic institutions, and fundamental freedoms. Senator Thom Tillis, a member of the Commission, affirmed at the Commission’s November hearing that “our partnerships are strongest when they are rooted in shared principles.” In this spirit, the U.S. Helsinki Commission will continue to support U.S. and Turkish efforts aimed at restoring respect for free press, human rights, and democratic institutions in Turkey.
[1] Statistics from the Committee to Protect Journalists are conservative compared to some other organizations, based on differing methodologies. Platform 24, for example, cites 152 imprisoned in Turkey.

press release

Chairman Wicker Statement on Lethal Arms Sales to Ukraine

Thursday, December 21, 2017

WASHINGTON—Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has issued the following statement in response to the Trump Administration’s approval of lethal arms sales to Ukraine:
“The President’s decision is a good first step to give the Ukrainian people the means to defend themselves. ‎The best way to stop Russian aggression is to deter it. I am hopeful that approval will also be given to future sales of anti-tank weapons and other heavy arms.”
The decision by the Department of State was reported as the fighting in eastern Ukraine has sharply escalated to levels not seen in months, following Russian unilateral withdrawal from a coordination mechanism critical to prior de-escalations and local ceasefires. The conditions of civilians in Eastern Ukraine was the focus of a November 30 Helsinki Commission briefing featuring a senior OSCE monitor.

press release

Chairman Wicker Welcomes First-Ever Global Magnitsky Sanctions List

Thursday, December 21, 2017

WASHINGTON—Following today’s announcement of the first 52 individuals and entities sanctioned under the “Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act,” Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS) issued the following statement:
“I welcome the Administration’s announcement of the first-ever sanctions list under the ‘Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.’ This groundbreaking tool for combating human rights abuses and corruption around the world is especially relevant in parts of the OSCE region, where in many countries, corruption is met only with impunity. The United States can now hold individuals like Artem Chayka, Albert Deboutte, and Gulnara Karimova accountable for their roles in sustaining kleptocratic regimes. I am hopeful that the Administration will continue to review and build upon this new list to make it as tough and meaningful as possible.”
The “Global Magnitsky Act,” which was passed in 2016, extends the authorities established by the original Magnitsky Act to include the worst human rights violators and those who commit significant acts of corruption around the globe. Both pieces of legislation have served as a model to hold individual perpetrators accountable for human rights violations and combat kleptocracy and corruption worldwide.

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Non-Governmental Participation in the OSCE

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are welcomed at many, though not all, meetings of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
OSCE rules for NGO participation are much simpler and more inclusive than at the United Nations (UN) or other international organizations, particularly as concerns human dimension events. One of the advantages of the OSCE is that it is the only international organization in which NGOs are allowed to participate in human dimension meetings on an equal basis with participating States. NGOs—no matter how small—can raise their concerns directly with governments. (Governments have a right of reply.) In addition, NGOs can hold side events during human dimension meetings in which they can focus on specific subjects or countries in greater depth than in the regular sessions of the event.
Download the full report to learn more.

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The Magnitsky Act at Five

Thursday, December 14, 2017

In 2009, Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was brutally murdered in prison after uncovering the theft of $230 million by corrupt Russian officials. On December 14, 2012, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was signed into law in the United States, establishing punitive sanctions – including financial freezes and visa restrictions – for those complicit in Magnitsky’s murder and other human rights abuses in the Russian Federation. For the past five years, the Magnitsky Act has served as a basis for fighting corruption in Russia and the Putin regime’s systematic violations of the human rights of Russian citizens.
On the fifth anniversary of the Magnitsky Act, the Helsinki Commission examined the implementation of the legislation, the resistance of the Russian government to it, and the impact of sanctions on senior members of Putin’s inner circle. The Commissioners heard testimony from William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, Garry Kasparov, Chair of the Human Rights Foundation, and the Hon. Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Sen. Roger Wicker (MS), Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, began by recognizing the retirement of Amb. David Killion, Chief of Staff of the Commission since 2014, and thanking Amb. Killion for his service. Before introducing the witnesses, Sen. Wicker condemned the corruption plaguing the Russian government, and quoted the murdered Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law passed in the United States.”
Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), Co-Chairman of the Commission, criticized the Russian government’s response to the Magnitsky Act. He described the harm done to vulnerable Russian orphans by their government’s decision to ban American parents from adopting children from Russia. Mr. Smith also noted that he and many other Americans involved in the passage of the Magnitsky Act have since been denied visas to enter Russia. This response, he said, shows that the Magnitsky Act “struck right to the heart of the Kremlin’s elite.”
Sen. Ben Cardin (MD), the Helsinki Commission’s ranking senator, praised the witnesses for their commitment to promoting human rights in Russia, and thanked the members of the Helsinki Commission and other members of Congress who played a role in the passage of the Magnitsky Act. Mr. Cardin also recognized the passage of Magnitsky legislation in Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, and recalled the power of American leadership on human rights, noting that, “when we lead, we find that other countries follow.”
William Browder, the first witness to testify, recalled the historic nature of the Magnitsky Act.
“On the day it passed, I could never have predicted how far the Magnitsky Act would spread around the world,” he said. “Without exaggeration, it has become the most important piece of human rights legislation passed in this century.”
He also called attention to the future of the Magnitsky movement, noting that the parliaments of Ukraine, South Africa, and Gibraltar are considering introducing similar legislation. In closing, Mr. Browder presented several suggestions to the Commission, including adding additional names to the list of sanctioned individuals, and encouraging other G7 countries to adopt Magnitsky legislation.
Garry Kasparov reiterated that the targeted sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky Act only apply to corrupt officials, and not the Russian people.
“Russian national interest and Putin’s interests are diametrically opposed in nearly every way,” he said. “This is why legislation that targets Putin and his mafia is pro-Russian, not anti-Russia.”
Mr. Kasparov observed that the Kremlin’s reaction proved the worth of the Magnitsky Act, and that, “it is essential to increase the pressure, to continue with what works now that the right path has been confirmed.”
At the conclusion of his testimony, Kasparov observed that “Putin and his gang . . . aren’t jihadists or ideologues, they are billionaires. . . . Follow the money, the real estate, the stock and reveal it, freeze it, so that one day it can be returned to the Russian people from whom it was looted.” More succinctly in a follow-up question, he quipped, “Banks, not tanks.”
Irwin Cotler gave an overview of the passage of the Canadian Magnitsky Act, and described the goals of the global Magnitsky movement.
The aim of Magnitsky legislation is “to combat the persistent and pervasive culture of corruption, criminality, and impunity and the externalized aggression abroad, of which Putin’s Russia is a case study” and “to deter thereby other prospective violators,” he said.
Passing such legislation also “tells human rights defenders, the Magnitskys of today, that they are not alone, that we stand in solidarity with them, that we will not relent in our pursuit of justice for them, and that we will undertake our international responsibilities in the pursuit of justice.”

WASHINGTON—On December 8, the OSCE concluded its annual meeting of the Foreign Ministers of 57 OSCE participating States by adopting a ministerial decision on combatting child trafficking—modeled on OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA) resolutions adopted in 2016 and 2017, authored by Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04). Rep. Smith is the Special Representative on Human Trafficking Issues in the OSCE PA.
Entitled “Strengthening Efforts to Combat All Forms of Child Trafficking, Including for Sexual Exploitation, as well as Other Forms of Sexual Exploitation of Children,” the decision provides practical steps for participating States to protect children from traveling sex offenders, and from misuse of the internet for child trafficking and other sexual exploitation.
“Traveling sex offenders rely on secrecy and anonymity to commit crimes against children; the new decision will deter the sexual exploitation of children at home and abroad, and aid in the prosecution of child sex traffickers,” said Smith.
The decision calls on each of the OSCE participating States to keep a register of individuals who have committed sex offenses against a child, and to share that information with the law enforcement in destination countries—which would give the United States warning of foreign sex offenders entering U.S. borders. The decision also calls on OSCE participating States to enact extra-territorial jurisdiction in order to “prosecute their citizens for serious sexual crimes against children, even if these crimes are committed in another country.”
“Some believe the laws of a destination country allow sexual exploitation of a child, or rely on the fact that the judicial system in the destination country is weak,” Smith continued. “The Ministerial decision underscores the universal human rights of the child to be protected from sexual exploitation and calls for participating States to put all abusers on notice—they will be prosecuted when they return home.”
In addition, the Ministerial decision echoes the Parliamentary Assembly resolutions by calling for accountability of those who misuse the Internet to knowingly or recklessly facilitate access to children for sexual exploitation or child trafficking—such as by advertising children on websites—highlighting that such individuals should be prosecuted as traffickers.
“With this binding decision, the foreign ministries of the 57 OSCE participating States stand united with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to protect children from trafficking and other sexual exploitation across the OSCE region,” said Smith.
Smith first raised the issue of human trafficking at the 1999 OSCE PA Annual Session in St. Petersburg, the first time it appeared on the OSCE agenda. Since then, he has introduced or cosponsored a supplementary item and/or amendments on trafficking at each annual session of the OSCE PA, including on issues such as sex tourism prevention, training of the transportation sector in victim identification and reporting, corporate responsibility for trafficking in supply chains, and special protections for vulnerable populations.
In addition to authoring the 2016 International Megan’s Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders, he authored the landmark U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its 2003 and 2005 reauthorizations. Chairman Smith co-chairs the United States Congressional Human Trafficking Caucus.

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2017 OSCE Ministerial

Monday, December 11, 2017

Foreign Ministers of the 57 OSCE participating States met in Vienna on December 7 and December 8, 2017 for the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council meeting. The United States was represented by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who in his statement described the OSCE as “an indispensable pillar of our common security architecture that bolsters peace and stability in Europe and Eurasia.”
Secretary Tillerson focused much of his statement on the conflict in Ukraine, reiterating the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders; calling for full implementation of the Minsk agreements; and confirming that Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine. In addition, he raised the importance of addressing radicalization and terrorism; the security consequences of irregular flows of migrants; and long-running conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Ministerial Council adopted decisions on reducing the risk of conflict from the use of information and communication technologies; strengthening efforts to prevent trafficking in human beings; strengthening efforts to combat all forms of child trafficking and sexual exploitation of children; promoting economic participation; as well as a statement on the negotiations on the Transdniestrian settlement process in the “5+2” Format.
Unfortunately, as has been the case for the past several years, the Ministerial Council was not able to reach consensus to adopt decisions in the human dimension, mainly due to Russian reluctance. Instead, 44 countries made a joint statement on human rights and fundamental freedoms, expressing concern about human rights and stressing the importance of civil society.
Several side events and other meetings took place on the margins of the Ministerial. Secretary Tillerson held several bilateral meetings, including one with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly held a meeting of its Bureau, and the NGO-network Civic Solidarity Platform held its annual OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference.
Helsinki Commission staff served as members of the U.S. Delegation to the Ministerial.

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The Legacy of Sergei Magnitsky

Sunday, December 10, 2017

By Woody Atwood, Intern
In 2008, a Russian tax lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky representing Hermitage Capital Management in a dispute over alleged tax evasion discovered a $230 million fraud being committed by Russian law enforcement officers assigned to the case.
Magnitsky reported the fraud to the authorities and was arrested soon after by the same officers he had accused. For almost a year, Magnitsky was held in squalid prison conditions, denied visits from his family, and beaten by guards. Despite developing serious cases of gallstones, pancreatitis, and cholecystitis, he was denied medical attention. On November 16, 2009, Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in his cell. He had been imprisoned for 358 days, just seven days short of the maximum legal pre-trial detention period in Russia.
A year later, Sen. Ben Cardin (MD), then Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, introduced the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act, directing the U.S. Secretary of State to publish a list of individuals involved in Sergei’s detention and death, and enabling the government to deny these individuals entry to the United States and freeze their American assets. The bill was reintroduced in the next Congress as the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. This version covered all individual who commit extrajudicial killings, torture or otherwise egregiously violate the human rights of activists or whistleblowers in Russia. Both houses of Congress passed the new bill in late 2012 as part of the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. On December 14, 2012, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act into law, establishing severe consequences for the worst human rights violators in Russia.
Just weeks after the passage of the Magnitsky Act, the Russian parliament and government responded by passing a law banning American families from adopting children from Russia. The law immediately terminated adoptions that were being processed, and many children, including children with serious disabilities, who were due to leave Russia were never able to join their American families. In 2013, the Russian government also issued a list of 18 American officials banned from entering Russia.
In 2015, Sen. Cardin and Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), who was then chairing the Helsinki Commission, introduced the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to expand the authorities established by the original Magnitsky Act to include the worst human rights violators and those who commit significant acts of corruption around the world. The legislation required the President to annually issue a list of individuals sanctioned under it on Human Rights Day (December 10) or the soonest day thereafter when the full Congress is in session. The global version was passed in December 2016 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.
The story of Sergei Magnitsky and the actions of the U.S. Congress have sparked a global movement to hold individual perpetrators accountable for their human rights violations and corruption. In the last year, Estonia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania have all passed their own Magnitsky laws.
In honor of Human Rights Day and the fifth anniversary of the Magnitsky Act, and to correspond to the deadline for the annual Global Magnitsky List, the U.S. Helsinki Commission is holding two events related to the legacy of Sergei Magnitsky. On Wednesday, December 13, at 3:00PM Commission staff will lead a public briefing on “Combating Kleptocracy with the Global Magnitsky Act,” and on Thursday, December 14, Commissioners will hear testimony on “The Magnitsky Act at Five: Assessing Accomplishments and Challenges.”

press release

Helsinki Commission to Assess Magnitsky Act at Five

Thursday, December 07, 2017

WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following hearing:
THE MAGNITSKY ACT AT FIVE:
ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CHALLENGES
Thursday, December 14, 2017
9:30 AM
Dirksen Senate Office Building
Room 562
Live Webcast: http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?type=live&comm=csce&filename=csce121417
In 2009, Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was brutally murdered in prison after uncovering the theft of $230 million by corrupt Russian officials. On December 14, 2012, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was signed into law in the United States, establishing punitive sanctions – including financial freezes and visa restrictions – for those complicit in Magnitsky’s murder and other human rights abuses in the Russian Federation. For the past five years, the Magnitsky Act has served as a basis for fighting corruption in Russia and the Putin regime’s systematic violations of the human rights of Russian citizens.
On the fifth anniversary of the Magnitsky Act, the Helsinki Commission will examine the implementation of the legislation, the resistance of the Russian government to it, and the impact of sanctions on senior members of Putin’s inner circle.
The following witnesses are scheduled to testify:
William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and author of Red Notice. Browder has led the fight to seek justice for Sergei Magnitsky and his family in both the U.S. and abroad. He will outline Russian opposition to his anti-corruption efforts and his work to help pass similar legislation around the world.
The Hon. Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights; Former Canadian Member of Parliament, Attorney General of Canada, and Minster of Justice. Cotler will provide details about Canada’s recent passage of its Magnitsky Act, its importance to Canada, and Russian resistance to the legislation.
Garry Kasparov, Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and author of Winter Is Coming: Why Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. Kasparov will explain the threat Putin’s regime poses toward the United States and analyze the Magnitsky Act’s efficacy.

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Ukraine: Report from the Front Lines

Thursday, November 30, 2017

For more than three years, civilians in eastern Ukraine have suffered the effects of a needless conflict manufactured and managed by Russia; an estimated 10,000 people have been killed and more than 23,500 injured. The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate amidst almost daily ceasefire violations and threats to critical infrastructure.
Joseph Stone, an American paramedic, was killed on April 23, 2017 while monitoring the conflict as an unarmed, civilian member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine. SMM reports remain the only source of verifiable, public information on this ongoing conflict and the grave, daily impact it has on the local civilian population. Mission personnel face regular and sometimes violent harassment by combined Russian-separatist forces seeking to limit the SMM’s access to the areas they control.
At this U.S. Helsinki Commission briefing, Alexander Hug, Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, detailed the humanitarian consequences of the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine; provided an overview of the role of OSCE monitors and the threats they face in carrying out their duties; and offered thoughts on prospects going forward.
Alexander Hug has served in several roles at the OSCE, including as a Section Head and a Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities as well as at the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. His career in conflict resolution includes work with the Swiss Headquarters Support Unit for the OSCE in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, and the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.

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Turkish Pressure on NGO Participation in the OSCE

Monday, November 27, 2017

In September 2017, Turkey walked out of the annual OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) in Warsaw to protest the registration of an NGO it claimed was a “terrorist” organization due to its alleged connections to Fethullah Gülen.
Since then, Turkey has continued to protest the NGO’s participation in OSCE events, and boycotted two subsequent Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings in Vienna: one on the role of free media in the comprehensive approach to security, held from November 2 to November 3, and one on access to justice as a key element of the rule of law, held from November 16 to November 17.
Under OSCE rules, the only grounds for excluding an NGO comes from the Helsinki 1992 Summit Document, which prohibits “persons or organizations which resort to the use of violence or publicly condone terrorism or the use of violence.” Turkey has demanded that the rule be renegotiated, and has implied that it might retaliate against the OSCE if the NGO continues to be allowed to attend OSCE events.
NGOs are allowed to participate in the upcoming OSCE Ministerial, which will be held in Vienna on December 7 and December 8. It is unclear how Turkey will react should the same NGO register for that event.

article

Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting: The Role of Free Media in the Comprehensive Approach to Security

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

By Jordan Warlick,
Policy Advisor
From November 2 to November 3, 2017, Helsinki Commission staff participated in the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on the Role of Free Media in the Comprehensive Approach to Security. Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings are convened a few times per year on specific subjects that are determined to deserve distinct focus by the Chairmanship-in-Office. Like the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings bring participating States and civil society actors together, facilitating dialogue on challenges to human rights issues in the OSCE region.
The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Harlem Désir, identified this topic – the role of free media in the comprehensive approach to security – as one of his four priorities at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in September 2017:
“My second priority will be to protect media freedom in the new security context….I fully support the efforts of governments to combat terrorism and create safer societies, but let me repeat this simple fact: there are ways to achieve these goals without compromising on our hard-fought fundamental freedoms.”
Unfortunately, some governments in the OSCE region consider a free press to be a threat to national security, and worse, persecute or silence journalists in the name of the security. Certain governments and nationalists justify the censorship of journalists by labelling them unpatriotic, even enemies of the state. Since the failed coup attempt Turkey, for example, hundreds of journalists have been arrested and media outlets shuttered on the basis of national security. The mere suspicion that citizens are part of the Gulenist movement – the group that the Turkish government blames for the coup attempt – can result in many years in prison, or even life sentences. Journalists, as well as civil society as a whole, have been particularly targeted by terrorism-related charges.
However, despite that freedom of expression and national security are often pitted against each other, the two are not mutually exclusive – in fact, they are complementary. An independent, free, and pluralistic media can play a role in peacebuilding and conflict prevention, countering prejudices or misperceptions, and preventing extremism and radicalization. Still, in a world where terrorists spread radical ideas, prejudiced organizations perpetuate intolerance, and government-sponsored bots disseminate misinformation, the tension between freedom of expression and national security seems greater than ever.
The conference featured three sessions: the first, on free media as a basis for European security; the second, on the role of the media in peacebuilding and conflict prevention; and the third, on the role of media in counteracting disinformation, “hate speech” and radicalization. Panelists and participants present discussed the tension between freedom of expression and security interests, the pressures independent media faces from this tension, and best practices for governments to uphold free media and expression commitments in this context.
The OSCE takes a comprehensive approach to security, subscribing to the idea that political-military security, human rights, and economic governance are mutually reinforcing ideals. It is important to encourage dialogue on best practices to ensure that participating States remain true to the ideals that the OSCE was founded upon, despite sometimes challenging circumstances.

WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following briefing:
UKRAINE: REPORT FROM THE FRONT LINES
Thursday, November 30, 2017
2:00PM
Senate Visitors Center (SVC)
Room 215
Live Webcast: www.facebook.com/HelsinkiCommission
For more than three years, civilians in eastern Ukraine have suffered the effects of a needless conflict manufactured and managed by Russia; an estimated 10,000 people have been killed and more than 23,500 injured. The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate amidst almost daily ceasefire violations and threats to critical infrastructure.
Joseph Stone, an American paramedic, was killed on April 23, 2017 while monitoring the conflict as an unarmed, civilian member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine. SMM reports remain the only source of verifiable, public information on this ongoing conflict and the grave, daily impact it has on the local civilian population. Mission personnel face regular and sometimes violent harassment by combined Russian-separatist forces seeking to limit the SMM’s access to the areas they control.
At this U.S. Helsinki Commission briefing, Alexander Hug, Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, will detail the humanitarian consequences of the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine; provide an overview of the role of OSCE monitors and the threats they face in carrying out their duties; and offer thoughts on prospects going forward.
Alexander Hug has served in several roles at the OSCE, including as a Section Head and a Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities as well as at the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. His career in conflict resolution includes work with the Swiss Headquarters Support Unit for the OSCE in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, and the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.

hearing

Prisoners of the Purge

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

In July 2016, the Turkish people helped defeat a coup attempt that sought to overthrow their country’s constitutional order. In pursuing those responsible for the putsch, however, Turkish authorities created a dragnet that ensnared tens of thousands of people. The state of emergency declared by President Erdogan in the immediate aftermath of the coup attempt remains in effect today and gives the government vast powers to detain or dismiss from employment almost anyone, with only minimal evidence.
Caught up in the sweeping purge are several American citizens, including Pastor Andrew Brunson, NASA scientist Serkan Gölge. Brunson worked and raised his family in Turkey for more than 23 years. Despite the efforts of the President of the United States, among many others, he has spent more than a year in jail without trial on national security charges. In addition, Gölge and two Turkish employees of U.S. consulates stand charged with terrorism offenses despite no involvement with violent activity—a situation faced by thousands of other Turks.
The U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing examined the factors contributing to the detention of American citizens, particularly Mr. Brunson, and U.S. consulate employees in Turkey, as well as the judicial processes to which they have been subject. Sen. Thom Tillis presided over the hearing, voicing his concerns about the treatment of American detainees in Turkey and the country’s deteriorating democratic institutions, particularly the judiciary.
During the hearing, the Commission heard testimony from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Jonathan Cohen, Executive Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) CeCe Heil, Pastor Brunson’s daughter Jacqueline Furnari, and Director of Freedom House’s Nations in Transit Project Nate Schenkkan.
All witnesses spoke to their concerns about the worsening political climate in Turkey and the safety of its political prisoners, including Mr. Brunson and Mr. Gölge. They also discussed the impact of these arrests on U.S.-Turkey relations and policy recommendations that could help secure their release and promote Turkey’s respect for its rule of law and other commitments as a participating State of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Mr. Cohen called on the Turkish government to end the protracted state of emergency, cease sweeping roundups, and expedite due process for all the detained. He encouraged Congress to continue engagement through in-person and written correspondence with Turkish officials to communicate concerns about specific detention cases and the broader rule of law.
Mr. Schenkkan detailed the scale of Turkey’s wide-scale purges, which he described as targeting independent voices and ordinary citizens from nearly every sector and as far exceeding any reasonable scope corresponding to the failed coup attempt. He recommended that the United States explore the application of individual sanctions against Turkish officials responsible for the prolonged and unjust detention of American citizens and U.S. consulate employees.
Mrs. Heil and Mrs. Furnari testified about the physical, psychological, and personal toll of Pastor Brunson’s prolonged detention. They noted that Pastor Brunson has lost 50 pounds while in detention and suffered psychologically and emotionally from his isolation and separation from his family.

in the news

Bill Browder, Putin Enemy No. 1

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

The harrowing tale of Bill Browder—how an American-born businessman became an enemy of the Russian state, how he has to live in constant fear, never knowing if the long arm of the Kremlin will snatch him, or kill him—is its own kind of daily terror. But what Browder’s story tells us about the way Vladimir Putin operates, and what he might want from this country, should scare us all.
William Browder took his family on vacation in July, though he won't say where because that is one of those extraneous bits of personal information that could, in a roundabout way, get him bundled off to a Siberian prison or, possibly, killed. For eight years, he's been jamming up the gears of Vladimir Putin's kleptocratic machine, a job that seems to often end in jail or death, both of which he'd very much like to avoid. He'll concede, at least, that his leisure travels took him from London, where he lives, through Chicago, where he changed planes. As he walked through a terminal at O'Hare, he got a call from a New York Times reporter named Jo Becker.
"Do you know anything," she asked, "about a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya?"
Browder stopped short. "Yes," he said. "I know a lot about her."
One of the most important things he knew was that Veselnitskaya had spent many dollars and many hours trying to convince Washington that Browder is a criminal. More than a decade ago, Browder was the largest individual foreign investor in Russia, managing billions in his hedge fund. Then, in 2009, one of his attorneys was tortured to death in a Moscow jail after exposing a massive tax fraud committed by Russian gangsters. His name was Sergei Magnitsky, and Browder has spent the years since trying to hold accountable anyone connected to Sergei's death. The most significant way is through the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, a 2012 U.S. law that freezes the assets and cripples the travel of specific Russians, many of whom have allegedly laundered millions of dollars in the West.
The Kremlin hates that law. Putin's hold on power requires the loyalty of dozens of wealthy oligarchs and thousands of complicit functionaries, and their loyalty, in turn, requires Putin to protect the cash they've stashed overseas. Putin hates the law so much that he retaliated by banning Americans from adopting Russian children—yes, by holding orphans hostage—and has said that overturning the Magnitsky Act is a top priority.
That's where Veselnitskaya comes in. As a lawyer, she represented a Russian businessman trying to recover $14 million frozen by the Magnitsky Act. More important, she was involved in an extensive 2016 lobbying and public-relations campaign to weaken or eliminate the act, in large part by recasting Browder as a villain who conned Congress into passing it. That was not empty political spin for an American audience: The Russians really do want Browder in prison. In 2013, a Russian court convicted him in absentia (and Sergei in his grave) of the very crime Sergei uncovered and sentenced Browder to nine years in prison. Later, it got worse. In April 2016, Russian authorities accused Browder of murdering Sergei—that is, of killing the person on whose behalf Browder had been crusading, and who the Russians for seven years had insisted was not, in fact, murdered.
The campaign was oafish yet persistent enough that Browder thought it wise to compile a 26-page presentation on the people behind it. Veselnitskaya appears on five of those pages.
"I've been trying to get someone to write this goddamned story," Browder told Becker on July 8. "She's not just some private lawyer. She's a tool of the Russian government."
But why, Browder wanted to know, was Becker suddenly interested?
"I can't tell you," she said. "But I think you'll be interested in a few hours."
Browder flew off to the place he won't name, switched on his phone, and scrolled to the Times website. He drew in a sharp breath.
He exhaled. F***.
Donald Trump Jr. told the Times that the June 9, 2016, meeting had been about adoptions, which demonstrated either how out of his depth he was or how stupid he thought reporters were. If Veselnitskaya had been talking about adoption, she of course had been talking about the Magnitsky Act.
Which meant she'd also been talking about Bill Browder.
He read the story again, closely. Browder wasn't sure what the implications were. But if he'd known about it in real time—that the staff of a major-party presidential candidate was listening intently to those who accuse him of murder and want him extradited and imprisoned—he would have been terrified.
"Putin kills people," Browder said to me one afternoon this autumn. "That's a known fact. But Putin likes to pretend that he doesn't kill people. So he tends to kill people he can get away with killing."
Browder did not say this as if it were a revelation. (And technically it's an allegation that Putin has people killed, albeit one so thoroughly supported by evidence and circumstance that no one credibly disputes it.) Rather, he told me that by way of explaining why he was telling me anything at all: The more often and publicly he tells the story of Sergei Magnitsky, the less likely he'll be to get poisoned or shot or tossed out a window, which has happened to a number of Putin's critics. If anything does happen to him, he reasons, the list of suspects would be short.
He spoke softly, methodically, though with great efficiency; not scripted, but well practiced. We were in the conference room of his offices in London. Afternoon light washed through a wall of windows, threw bright highlights onto his scalp, sparked off the frame of his glasses. Browder is 53 years old, medium build, medium height, medium demeanor, and was wearing a medium-blue suit. He does not look like a threat to Russian national security, which the Kremlin declared him to be 12 years ago. Still, there is a hint of steel, something hard and sharp beneath all of the mediumness; if he confessed that he'd served in the Special Forces, it would be a little surprising but not shocking.
It was late September, and Donald Trump had been president for 248 days. In the weeks after the election, Browder was "worried and confused." Trump has a creepy habit of praising Putin, but he'd also surrounded himself with Russia hard-liners like General James Mattis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pompeo—secretary of defense, ambassador to the United Nations, and director of the CIA, respectively. Browder war-gamed the Magnitsky Act but didn't see any way that Trump could kill it—Congress would have to repeal the law—only a chance that he might refuse to add more names to the target list. (Five people were added to the list last January, bringing the total to 44.) He figured the same was true with the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which President Obama signed shortly before leaving office, expanding the targeted-sanctions tool to human-rights abusers worldwide. The Russians hate that law, too, because having "Magnitsky" in the title reminds the entire planet where the standard was set and by whom.
The first months of the new administration unspooled, spring into summer. Trump's flirtation with Putin persisted, but with no practical effect. "The Russians got nothing," Browder said. Congress, in fact, imposed its own sanctions on Russia for meddling in the 2016 election, cutting Trump out of the loop entirely. "I watch this like a hawk," Browder said, "and so far they've gotten nothing. There's not a single piece of Russian policy that's gone Putin's way."
But then, in July, the Times reported that Veselnitskaya had met with Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager at the time, in June 2016. That shifted the calculus. "America has been my staunchest ally," Browder said. "It wasn't an assumption but a question: Had they flipped my biggest ally?"
That was still an open question when we met in London. Much more had been reported about Trump and Russia. Other contacts and communications were known, and details kept evolving, an endless, sloppy churn of information. There was more, too, about the meeting with Veselnitskaya, which happened two weeks after Trump secured the nomination: It was attended by eight people in all, including Rinat Akhmetshin, who is usually described as a former Russian military-intelligence officer, though that generously assumes that any Russian spook is ever fully retired from the spy game. Browder has another PowerPoint presentation on him. Additionally, Manafort's notes on the meeting reportedly mentioned Browder by name.
This is all bad. "They were in a meeting to discuss Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act, and how to get the Magnitsky Act repealed," he said. "Now, what [the Russians] were offering in return, we don't know. But if it had just been a courtesy meeting, only one of [the Trump team] would have showed up."
Maybe no one will ever know what, if anything, the Russians offered. But there's no doubt what they wanted, and how badly. In a four-page memo prepared for the meeting by Veselnitskaya (and later obtained by Foreign Policy), the Magnitsky Act was inspired by "a fugitive criminal" who ripped off the Russian treasury and then went on a worldwide publicity tour to, apparently, cover it up. "Using the grief of the family of Magnitsky to his own advantage, Browder exposes them as a human shield to distract attention from the details of his own crime," she wrote. Passage of the Magnitsky Act, moreover, marked "the beginning of a new round of the Cold War."
That is an assertion as grandiose as it is belligerent. And yet it is not wholly inaccurate. To understand why the Kremlin is so perturbed, it helps to understand Bill Browder. In many ways, he is the Rosetta Stone for decoding the curious relationship between the Trumps and the Russians.
Browder's grandfather Earl was a communist. He started as a union organizer in Kansas and spent some time in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, where he married a Jewish intellectual and had the first of his three sons, Felix. The family moved to Yonkers in 1932, where Earl became secretary general of the Communist Party USA. He ran for president twice, in 1936 and 1940, and Time magazine put him on its cover in 1938 above the headline COMRADE EARL BROWDER. His fortunes fell in 1941, when he was convicted of passport fraud. His four-year sentence was commuted after 14 months, and he was released into relative obscurity until the 1950s, when he was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Bill's grandmother steered her boys away from politics and toward academics, in which they wildly overachieved. Felix enrolled at M.I.T. at the age of 16, graduated in two years, and had a Princeton Ph.D. in math when he was 20. He met his wife, Eva, at M.I.T., a Jewish girl who'd fled Vienna ahead of the Nazis and spent her teenage years in a tenement with her impoverished mother.
Felix and Eva had two boys. Their first, Thomas, took after his father: University of Chicago at 15, doctoral student in physics at 19. Their second, Bill, did not. He liked to ski and smoke and drink. He got kicked out of a second-tier boarding school and barely got into the University of Colorado, which was fine with him because it was a notorious party school. By his account, he spent his formative years rebelling against everything his leftist-intellectual family held sacred.
"Rejecting school was a good start, but if I really wanted to upset my parents, then I would have to come up with something else," he wrote in his 2015 book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. "Then, toward the end of high school, it hit me. I would put on a suit and tie and become a capitalist. Nothing would piss off my family more than that."
He started studying, transferred to the University of Chicago, got into a two-year pre-MBA program at Bain & Company, in Boston. He parlayed that and an essay about Comrade Earl Browder—from communist to capitalist in two generations!—into a seat at Stanford. Out of genealogical curiosity, he began thinking about Eastern Europe. "If that's where my grandfather had carved out his niche," he wrote, "then maybe I could, too." He got a job with a consulting firm and moved to London in August 1989. Three months later, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled. Eastern Europe was wide open for business.
His first account was consulting for a Polish bus manufacturer that was bleeding cash. It was miserable work in a miserable little city, but while he was there his translator explained the financial tables in the local newspaper. With the fall of communism, nationalized companies were being privatized and their stocks were offered at fire-sale prices: A company with $160 million in profits the previous year had a stock valuation of only $80 million.
Browder invested his entire savings, $2,000, in Polish stocks. He eventually walked away with $20,000. He'd found his niche.
By 1993, he was in Moscow, investing in staggeringly undervalued stocks: He invested $25 million and turned a $100 million profit. With money that good and almost no Western competition, Browder, in 1996, raised enough cash to open his own fund, Hermitage Capital.
Over the next decade, Hermitage did exceptionally well. The downside, though, was that the economy wasn't transitioning from communism to capitalism so much as it was devolving into gangsterism. Corruption was endemic. A handful of oligarchs looted and swindled at their leisure. Browder countered by positioning himself as an activist shareholder; he and his staff would piece together who was ripping off what, name names, try to impose a modicum of order on a lawless system.
When Vladimir Putin rose to power, Browder believed he was a reformer eager to purge the kleptocracy. In 2003, for example, Putin arrested the country's richest man, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, charged him with fraud, and displayed him in a cage in a courtroom until his inevitable conviction. In the context of the time, many critics saw the ordeal as a capricious show trial orchestrated by an authoritarian thug.
Not Browder. "I would trust Putin any day of the week," he told The Washington Post in early 2004. "It's like being in a lawless schoolyard where there's bullies running around and beating up all us little people, and then one day a big bully comes along and all the little bullies fall into line. That's what the state is supposed to be—the big bully."
But Putin, he discovered, wasn't pushing for good corporate governance. He was taking over the rackets. Putin put Khodorkovsky in a cage for the same reason Vito Corleone put a horse's head in Jack Woltz's bed: to send a message. Oligarchs could steal, but they had to pay tribute.
Oligarchs no longer needed to be named and shamed; they needed to be kept in line and to keep earning. At that point, an activist shareholder like Browder became an expensive nuisance. Browder was kicked out of the country on November 13, 2005.
For a while, he thought the Russian bureaucracy had made a mistake by canceling his visa, confusing him with someone else, perhaps, or misfiling some paperwork. He enlisted the help of British diplomats—Browder had been a British citizen since 1998—to no avail. There had been no mistake. Browder had been declared a threat to Russian national security.
Hermitage Capital remained in business, though, its office run by Browder's staff while he oversaw operations from London. But in Moscow, the pressure only increased. In June 2007, security forces raided Hermitage and the office of the law firm it employed. They carted away computers and files and, interestingly, all the corporate seals and stamps. At first, none of that made sense.
But then Sergei Magnitsky, a 36-year-old Muscovite who handled tax matters for Hermitage, started digging around. He eventually discovered three of Hermitage's holding companies had been used by Russian gangsters to swindle $230 million in tax rebates. It was a straight-up robbery of the Russian treasury. The scam wasn't unheard of, except the amount was perhaps the largest such tax fraud ever uncovered in Russia.
Browder and his staff reported the theft to the authorities and the media in the summer of 2008. They even named suspects, including some of the security officials who'd earlier been involved in the office raids. Nothing happened. Then, a few months later, on November 24, 2008, Sergei was arrested at his home.
He was held for nearly a year in various prisons, overrun with rats and damp with sewage. According to complaints Sergei wrote, he was fed porridge infested with insects and rotten fish boiled into mush. He contracted pancreatitis and gallstones but was refused treatment. Yet he was repeatedly told he would be released if he would recant his allegations and, instead, implicate Browder as the mastermind of the tax scam. He refused every time.
Almost a year after he was arrested, desperately ill, Sergei was handcuffed to a bed rail in an isolation cell. Eight guards beat him with rubber truncheons. A little more than an hour later, he was dead.
Before Sergei was killed, Browder had been lobbying anyone he could think of to pressure the Russians into releasing his accountant. One of the agencies he approached in the spring of 2009 was the U.S. Helsinki Commission, an independent federal agency in Washington that monitors human rights in 57 countries, including Russia.
Kyle Parker, one of the Russia experts there, wasn't interested. He knew who Browder was—the money manager who'd championed Putin, the guy who'd made the rounds of Western capitals a few years earlier trying to get his visa restored. He assumed that's what Browder was still after. "Not gonna be able to make it," he e-mailed a colleague scheduling the meeting. "Unless much has changed, I see this meeting as info only and would not support any action on our part."
He eventually met with Browder, though, and he listened to the story of Sergei. Parker understood, but it didn't seem especially uncommon. "I was thinking: Why is Bill trying to suck us into a pissing match between competing criminal groups?"
Parker didn't even include Sergei in a 2009 letter to Obama highlighting the commission's most pressing concerns.
After Sergei had been killed, Browder went back to the Helsinki Commission.
Parker told him how sorry he was. He told him that he cried when he heard Sergei was dead, that he read about it through teary eyes on the Metro, riding the Red Line home to his wife and kids. He said he was going to help.
"Here you have this Russian hero almost of a literary quality in Sergei Magnitsky," Parker told me. "He wasn't a guy who went to rallies with a bullhorn and protested human-rights abuses in Chechnya. He was a bookish, middle-class Muscovite. I see Sergei metaphorically as that Chinese guy standing in front of the tanks, but with a briefcase. He provided an example for all the other Russians that not everybody goes in for the deal, not everybody is corrupt, not everybody looks the other way when people are swindled."
What Browder wanted was some form of justice for Sergei, though what form that would take was unclear. He'd researched his options for months. The Russians weren't going to prosecute anyone—officially, Sergei died of heart failure. There was no international mechanism to hold Russian nationals criminally accountable in another country. "Eventually," Browder said, "it became obvious that I was going to have to come up with justice on my own."
He outlined a three-pronged approach. One was media, simply getting Sergei's name and his death and the reasons for it into the public consciousness. He talked to reporters, and he produced a series of YouTube videos, short documentaries on the people allegedly involved in Sergei's death.
The second was tracing the money. "They killed him for $230 million," Browder said, "and I was going to find out where that money went." It was parceled out to dozens of people, tucked away in Swiss accounts and American real estate and Panamanian banks, some of it held by proxies; part of it allegedly ended up in the account of a Russian cellist who happened to be a childhood friend of Putin's. By mining bank transfers and financial records, Browder and his staff have accounted for much of it, including $14 million allegedly laundered by a Cypriot company into Manhattan property. (The Justice Department froze those funds in 2013 but settled with the company, Prevezon, last summer for $5.9 million. Prevezon's owner, a Russian named Denis Katsyv, is represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya. The case did not allege that he had any role in Magnitsky's death.)
The final prong was political. Browder had heard about an obscure regulation that allows the State Department to put visa restrictions on corrupt foreign officials. But in the spring of 2010, the Obama administration was attempting to normalize relations with Russia—a "reset," as Obama famously put it. People die horrible deaths every day, and it's terrible and it shouldn't happen. But Russia is also a large country with a significant sphere of geopolitical influence and a lot of nuclear weapons. In that context, a dead middle-class tax lawyer wasn't relevant.
But what if, Parker suggested, they went to Congress? What if the legislature, rather than the administration, took action?
That was also a long shot. Getting any law passed is difficult, let alone one the administration opposes. But Browder told Sergei's story to congressional committees and individual senators and congressmen, and he kept telling it until the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law 11 days before Christmas 2012.
The act originally named 18 Russians, including bureaucrats implicated in the original scam; investigators Sergei had accused of being involved and getting a cut of the $230 million; jailers who tormented him; and two alleged killers. As more of the stolen money was traced, more names were added to the list. Everyone on it is banned from entering the United States and, more damaging, cut off from the American banking system. That has a ripple effect: Legitimate financial institutions all over the world monitor the Treasury Department list of sanctioned individuals and are loath to do business with anyone on it. "That's what people hate about it the most," Browder said. "It makes you a financial leper."
And that matters to Putin, Browder maintains, because the Russians on the list are not independently wealthy, like, say, Bill Gates or Richard Branson. "They're dependently wealthy," he said. "They're dependent on Putin." If the deal is that corrupt Russians can keep their cash in return for their loyalty, the Magnitsky Act is an enormous thorn in Putin's side. If he can't protect anyone's pilfered money, what's the point of loyalty? Putin surely understands that, because he was so transparently rattled: Taking orphans hostage is not the reasoned reaction of a man merely annoyed.
Browder initially wanted to call the law the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act. But Parker never took to that. "Banning some corrupt officials from coming here isn't even close to justice," he said. "But it's a legislative monument to Sergei Magnitsky until one day Russia builds a stone monument to him. Because I have no doubt he'll be seen as the Russian patriot and hero that he was."
Not quite three weeks after the Times broke the story of Veselnitskaya lobbying the Trump campaign to get rid of the Magnitsky Act, Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about, primarily, how Russian operatives wield influence and frame their propaganda. Eight years after he'd started targeting a handful of Russian crooks, Browder was suddenly very relevant to a much larger political storm.
He flew home to London after he testified but had to return to the United States in early August. He checked in at an airline counter in Heathrow but was told there was a problem with his visa. He'd been flagged by Interpol, which had issued a red notice on him. It's basically an international arrest warrant, and it was the fourth requested by the Russians for Browder. Technically, a member nation is supposed to extradite him to the country that asked for the notice. But the British, along with other sensible Western nations, stopped taking Russia's attempts regarding Browder seriously years ago.
In the end, it was only an inconvenience. But what if he'd been in, say, Finland when that notice popped up? The Finns are fine people, but they also have a 500-mile border with Russia. Would letting Browder go be worth risking an international incident with a bigger, more aggressive neighbor? He can make a reasonable case that, no, he would not be worth it. "I'm very realistic about who's coming to my defense," he said. "I am my defense."
So he's careful. He avoids countries that might be friendly to Putin. Much of the Third World is out. So is Hong Kong. He'd be fine in Japan, but only if he didn't fly over Russian airspace. What if the plane has trouble and makes an emergency landing in Novosibirsk? That's where Khodorkovsky was seized and hauled off to a cage.
Even in London, he's cautious. He won't talk about his family or where he lives. He varies his schedule and his route to work every day. He doesn't eat in the same restaurant twice in succession, or in any restaurant with predictable frequency; Russian agents have reputedly twice poisoned dissidents in London. He told me the British government has rebuffed at least a dozen requests to extradite him, and American intelligence has warned him that Russian agents planned to grab him off the street.
Years ago, a Russian living in London came to Browder's staff with information about certain wealthy, corrupt people in Moscow. He was cagey and shifty and, at first, it seemed like he might be a Russian agent trying to plant false clues. But his information checked out and Browder learned who he really was. His name was Alexander Perepilichnyy, and he was nervous because he believed he was on a Russian hit list.
On November 10, 2012, Perepilichnyy dropped dead in front of his house in Surrey. There was no obvious cause of death—no heart attack or stroke or aneurysm—and an inquest wasn't opened until last June. Perepilichnyy wasn't a well-known dissident, so no one thought to take a hard look when he died. "They got away with it," Browder said, meaning the Russians. "That's a perfect example of why you don't want to be an anonymous guy who drops dead."
So Browder is deliberately not anonymous. He does not live in cloistered fear. When a car service got confused trying to pick him up for a photo shoot—definitely a way to not be anonymous—we took the Tube a few stops, then walked through Kentish Town to the studio. There was no security, just two men wandering around London. He has hobbies that he asked I not name, but none of them are solitary or sedentary. "One thing I can tell you," he said, "with the threat of death hanging over you, you live life to the fullest." He laughed a little.
In this new version of his life, Browder is still most often referred to as a financier, but that's only marginally true. He gave all his investors their money back, and manages only his own now. Justice for Sergei—and aggravating Putin—is his full-time job. His staff of 11 tracks money launderers, deciphering which flunky is fronting for which oligarch, sniffing out the rest of that $230 million. He lobbies other governments to pass their own versions of the Magnitsky Act. The United Kingdom has one, as does Estonia. Lithuania is close, and Canada passed one in October. "Unconstructive political games," Putin told a Canadian interviewer immediately after, orchestrated by "the criminal activities of an entire gang led by one particular man, I believe Browder is his name."
And Putin wasn't finished. A week later, Russia slipped another red notice into Interpol's system. For the second time in three months, Browder was temporarily barred from entering the U.S. It's relentless, Putin clawing at him, thrashing. "Their main objective is to get me back to Russia," he said. "And they only have to get lucky once. I have to be lucky every time."
"Everything Bill's done has cost him tremendously," Parker said. "It's cost him money, restricted his personal freedom. And he didn't have to. He was out of Russia. He could have done what many did and walked away. Bad things happen, right? But here's a guy who's proven whatever he needed to prove to himself. He made his money. Now here's a way to find meaning. It's also a debt of honor."
No, it's more than that. "It's penance," Browder said. Sergei Magnitsky was an ordinary Muscovite who happened to work for an American who annoyed Vladimir Putin. "Sergei was killed because of me. He was killed instead of me." He let that hang there a moment. "So, yeah, it's all penance."
Sean Flynn is a GQ correspondent.
This story originally appeared in the December 2017 issue with the title "Putin Enemy No.1."

briefing

Internet Freedom in the OSCE Region: Trends and Challenges

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 the U.S. Helsinki Commission held a briefing on internet freedom in the OSCE region. The panelists – Sanja Kelly, Director of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net; Dariya Orlova, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director for Research at the Mohyla School of Journalism in Kyiv, Ukraine; Berivan Orucoglu, Human Rights Defenders Program Coordinator at the McCain Institute; and Jason Pielemeier, Policy Director at the Global Network Initiative – discussed concerning developments in participating States.
First, Sanja Kelly provided an overview of Freedom House’s work on internet freedom issues and described the recent edition of the Freedom on the Net report, which was released that very day. The report found that internet freedom declined for the seventh consecutive year around the world, but that the situation among OSCE participating States is more diverse. The region includes some of the report’s best performers, such as Estonia, Iceland, Germany and the United States, as well as some of its worst performers, with Russia, Turkey and Uzbekistan. She also noted the concerning finding that Russia is using the internet to interfere in domestic processes in other OSCE participating States. She pointed out that the “same manipulation techniques, including paid pro-government commentators, bots and fake news, that the Russian authorities have been using in their disinformation campaigns abroad, have long been used … against Russian independent journalists, political opponents and other critical voices.”
After that, Dariya Orlova gave an account of the deteriorating internet freedom situation in Ukraine. To blame for this decline, she said, is the introduction of bans on several Russian internet services, including social media networks, email services and search engines. According to Dariya, there has been a lack of outspoken critique against these measures among domestic audiences. She also drew attention to the increasingly dangerous environment that online activists and journalists find themselves in. Then, she briefly explained some of the Kremlin’s tactics when it comes to weaponizing social media platforms.
Berivan Orucoglu focused her remarks on the sharp decline in internet freedom that Turkey has experienced in the past few years. In her eyes, this reflects a crackdown on press freedom and freedom of expression more generally. In an effort to control the narrative, the Turkish government has jailed journalists, curbed dissent on social media, as well as in the mainstream media and otherwise intimidated critics. More often than not, national security reasons are cited as justification for these measures.
In closing, Jason Pielemeier introduced his organization, the Global Network Initiative, to the audience and proceeded to place some of the aforementioned internet freedom trends into historical context. By doing so, he tried to understand the motivations of repressive regimes to clamp down on online activity. He also touched on more technical aspects of the discussion, such as data localization and the effects such measures have on intelligence operations.

press release

Turkey’s Detention of U.S. Citizens to Be Scrutinized at Helsinki Commission Hearing

Thursday, November 09, 2017

WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following hearing:
PRISONERS OF THE PURGE: THE VICTIMS OF TURKEY’S FAILING RULE OF LAW
November 15, 2017
9:30AM
Dirksen Senate Office Building
Room 124
Live Webcast: http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?type=live&comm=csce&filename=csce111517
In July 2016, the Turkish people helped defeat a coup attempt that sought to overthrow their country’s constitutional order. In pursuing those responsible for the putsch, however, Turkish authorities created a dragnet that ensnared tens of thousands of people. The state of emergency declared by President Erdogan in the immediate aftermath of the coup attempt remains in effect today and gives the government vast powers to detain or dismiss from employment almost anyone, with only minimal evidence.
Caught up in the sweeping purge are several American citizens, including pastor Andrew Brunson, who worked and raised his family in Turkey for more than 23 years. Despite the efforts of the President of the United States, among many others, he has spent more than a year in jail without trial on national security charges. Additionally, a Turkish-American NASA scientist and two Turkish employees of U.S. consulates stand charged with terrorism offenses despite no involvement with violent activity—a situation faced by thousands of other Turks.
The U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing will examine the factors contributing to the detention of American citizens, particularly Mr. Brunson, and U.S. consulate employees in Turkey, as well as the judicial processes to which they have been subject. One of Mr. Brunson’s family members and his U.S. attorney will testify about his ongoing detention. Witnesses will also discuss the impact of these arrests on U.S.-Turkey relations and policy recommendations that could help secure their release and promote Turkey’s respect for its rule of law and other commitments as a participating State of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Panel One:
Jonathan R. Cohen, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Panel Two:
CeCe Heil, Executive Counsel, American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)
Jacqueline Furnari, Daughter of Andrew Brunson
Nate Schenkkan, Director of the Nations in Transit Project, Freedom House